It's fitting as spring will come a couple of weeks early, according to the careful observations of Nancy Hopping, who has an exhibit of wildlife photography along with her new picture book titled "Backyard Bears" at Chant's Lords Valley office at 631 Route 739 through March. The bears who play in her yard are asleep now, but may emerge from hibernation soon, as she notices goldfinches are already becoming bright yellow, their mating hue, and buds are swelling and likely to "leaf out" early.

Hopping explained her history and wildlife ventures on the phone while Moose, her Australian shepherd, barked at the wind whistling around her Greentown house, located near many open acres where she can observe and photograph much wildlife drama. One stage is her bird feeder, which also attracts squirrels that draw hawks, while rabbits appeal to great horned and barred owls.

A photographer at 12

She has been photographing wildlife since she was 12 and also learning about animals' appetites and habitats, initially with Audubon wildlife guides.

"If you learn where animals live and what they feed on, you get better photos," Hopping says.

She has also learned about animal tracks by photographing and then identifying them.

"Who knew that the gray fox climbs trees and the red fox doesn't?" she said.

She explains that the red fox has a furrier foot than the gray fox, which has a smaller, tighter paw, with nails visible in its snow tracks.

"You can find a gray fox in an apple tree eating an apple," she said. However, she also recalls, from a fishing trip, finding a red fox on the roof of a pickup.

Hopping learned fly-fishing from a book 30 years ago and has often done fishing trips up and down the coast since then. She teaches fly-fishing classes, for which she made a pond in her yard. She brought mud and fish from elsewhere, all of which appealed to frogs.

"I have frogs of all shapes and sizes," she says. "Their trills are cool to listen to on a summer evening. But they're so loud it can be deafening."

A great blue heron visited one morning, and a bald eagle sometimes circles or watches from a high limb.

Savors quiet

Quiet is essential to maintaining her backyard ecosystem, says Hopping. Moose is only allowed brief outings, as his barking even scares bears, who come early in the morning to swim in the pond and may stay until 10 or 11 a.m. They leave the pond half-empty, soaking up water with their fur, says Hopping. She never talks to them or "gentles" them.

Hopping's picture book chronicles the tale of a mother bear and her three cubs, Happy, Big Brother and Little Sister, which Hopping watched for more than a year and a half, until the mother bear drove away her children and found a new mate.

"It was hard to see her be so mean," Hopping said. "She charged them and grunted and chased them up a tree. They didn't come down until she left."

The yearling cubs eventually came back to swim, first Little Sister, who ran up a tree when her brother arrived.

"She hit, snarled, hissed, and popped her jaw," says Hopping. "He grunted quietly and pleaded with her not to hate him. He must have followed her all night. In the morning they all came back together and played all summer and the following year. Then I didn't see them again."

Meanwhile in Chant's Milford office at 106 E. Harford St., Audrey Lanham is a Realtor there by day who moonlights as a watercolorist, sometimes in sunshine. She also curates the office art exhibit. For "Art After Dark," Milford's second Saturday of the month evening gallery event, Lanham had hung an assortment of paintings by local artists, including herself.

Lanham's watercolor teacher, Jane Brennan Koeck, has been doing watercolors on canvas, which gave texture to her finely detailed painting of tomatoes and jars, aptly hung near the door to the kitchen of the old house in which the Milford office is located at 106 E. Harford St. The house once belonged to Cyrille Pinchot, forefather of Gifford Pinchot, a Pennsylvania governor who started the U.S. Forest Service.

Across the room was "Remembering the Dance," by Phyllis Barfoot, a monoprint on fabric. Lanham explained that a monoprint results from "painting a picture and then smashing it down on paper." However, Barfoot's painting of a dancer standing on one leg, bordered by leaves, did not indicate the delicacy of the process.

Meanwhile, Lanham, who often paints landscapes and still life, also portrays humans. She displayed a motley assemblage of backlit human forms, shadowed but colorful, titled "Close Encounters." And somehow a sunflower she started painting began to look like a man to her and became one in an ambiguously interesting piece called "I'm Cool."